What Others Say: Gun law

Here in Florida, your doctor may ask you to turn your head and cough, but he’d better not ask if there are guns in your house.

Upheld by a recent decision of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, Florida’s NRA-hyped “Docs vs. Glocks” law prevents physicians from asking patients questions about guns, under threat of fine or suspension of medical license.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association blasted the court’s ruling, with the AAP encouraging members to continue to ask parents about gun safety. Good for them. That’s civil disobedience in the service of justice and safety.

According to Clay Calvert, Brechner Eminent Scholar in Mass Communication at the University of Florida, the law is the only one of its kind in the nation. Which raises a different question for physicians: How sick in the head is the Florida Legislature?

Only a statewide act of defiance will illustrate the sheer scale of stupidity from which this law was born. In other words, doctors, it’s time to remind the politicians that you are far, far more educated than they are.

Not only is this law a gross overstep of government into the lives and rights of private citizens. Not only is it more reminiscent of the speech-restricting lawmaking of the Castro regime than freedom-loving, doctor-trusting American values. Not only is it a clear violation of a physician’s individual First Amendment rights. It’s just absurdly unenforceable.

This law known formally as the Florida Privacy of Firearm Owners Act, was signed into reality by Gov. Rick Scott in 2011. Fortunately, it remains unenforced as it makes its way through the courts. The next group of judges to hear the case should promptly save our state further embarrassment and kill it.

But even that will be no cure. Unnecessary and legally flimsy gun laws are a reoccurring symptom of a greater Sunshine State sickness: a Legislature sweating and trembling with NRA fever.